The Buzz

NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS

Artists learn early to pay attention to negative space, while journalists know to dread it. What's to say about the news that did not happen? Yet in August the biggest stories were those that failed to come true—beginning with the plot to blow up transatlantic flights to the United States and ending with (and possibly linked to) the prediction that Iran would launch a strike against the West, most likely Jerusalem, on Aug. 22.

Muslims and non-Muslims alike gazed into the stars on the night of Aug. 21 following a threat from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to "light up the heavens in answer to the UN"—his response to a Security Council deadline for Iran to comply with international demands to end its uranium enrichment program. Even the very conventional Princeton Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis took Ahmadinejad's words as a threat—pointing out that Aug. 22 corresponds with the Islamic calendar date when Muslims celebrate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on a winged horse to "the farthest mosque"—a reference to Jerusalem—where a divine white light would spread from there to cover the whole world. In an Aug. 8 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Mr. Lewis noted, "This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world."

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